At the Democratic presidential debate Saturday night, the leading presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, showed a troubling ambivalence regarding the identity of, arguably, the most dangerous people threatening civilization today. CBS News moderator John Dickerson phrased it this way: “Marco Rubio, also running for president, said … the attack in Paris showed that we are at war with radical Islam. Do you agree with that characterization, radical Islam?” Her answer was articulated perfectly, so that even a Clinton would have difficulty walking away from it at some future point. It was the kind of answer team Hillary must have worked on since the first news had come in about the terrorist massacres in Paris. Hillary answered: “I don’t think we’re at war with Islam. I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims. I think we’re at war with jihadists.”

On the face of it, Clinton’s answer was identical to Senator Rubio’s, except she substituted the term “radical Islam” for “jihadists.” What followed was a discussion of language that could determine the future of the world. Dickerson said, “Just to interrupt, he didn’t say all Muslims. He just said radical Islam. Is that a phrase you don’t—”

Hillary responded: “I think that you can— you can talk about Islamists who— clearly are also jihadists. But I think it’s— it— it’s not particularly helpful to make the case that— Senator Sanders was just making that I agree with that we’ve gotta’ reach out to Muslim countries. We’ve gotta’ have them be part of our coalition.

“If they hear people running for— president who basically shortcut it to say we are somehow against Islam … despite all the other problems that George W. Bush made after 9/11.. he basically said after going to a mosque in Washington, ‘We are not at war with Islam or Muslims. We are at war with violent extremism. We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression.’ And yes, we are at war with those people that I don’t want us to be painting with too brand a brush.”

To summarize, the problem is not in defining who the bad Muslims are, the problem is in doing it while not alienating the good Muslims.

Huma Abedin is one such good Muslim. She is disgraced former NY Congressman Anthony Weiner’s wife, and she is also a major candidate for the post of Chief of Staff or something on that order in the Clinton White House, should Hillary win next November. Abedin has been a long-time aide to Mrs. Clinton, and served as her Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department (making $490,000 a year). Abedin serves as vice chairwoman of Clinton’s 2016 campaign for President. John Podesta, who served as President Bill Clinton’s COS is the campaign chairman.

Hillary Clinton has been described Huma Abedin’s other mother. In 2010, when Abedin married Weiner, Hillary said: “I have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would [be] Huma.” And during a trip Clinton and Huma made to Saudi Arabia, Huma’s actual mother said, “Hillary, you have spent more time with my daughter than I have in the past 15 years. I’m jealous of you!”

Abedin’s father, Syed Zainul Abedin, was Indian, and her mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is Pakistani. Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. At the age of two, she moved with her family to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she was raised and lived until returning to the United States for college. It is safe to say that she spent her formative years deeply mired in an Islamist environment, and a Saudi one at that.

However, Saleha Abedin is a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. She runs the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC), which is part of an officially designated terrorist organization (the so called “Union for Good”). The Union for Good’s leader Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi has issued fatwas demanding the killing of Americans in Iraq and suicide bombings in Israel.

When Huma Abedin served as top aide to Secretary of State Clinton, Hillary intervened personally to reverse a Bush-administration ruling barring the son of a Muslim Brothers major leader, Tariq Ramadan, from entering the US; the State Department excluded Israel from its “Global Counterterrorism Forum,” but prominently included Turkey; the State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions blocking the transfer $1.5 billion dollars in aid to Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory in the parliamentary elections; the State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions blocking the transfer millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian territories, while Hamas ruled the Gaza Strip; and the State Department hosted a contingent from Egypt’s newly elected parliament that included Muslim Brotherhood members and member of Gamaa al-Islamiyya, a formally designated terrorist organization—to name but a few egregious moves. For the full list visit the National Review’s article, “The Huma Unmentionables.”

Which is why every added Muslim atrocity makes it tougher on Hillary Clinton to make it to the White House with her ties with her Saudi raised chief aide intact. And that might be another reason as to why candidate Hillary is having so much trouble with the term “Islamist Terrorism.”

Moderator Dickerson on Saturday night said: “The reason I ask is that you gave a speech at Georgetown University in which you said that it was important to show— quote— respect even for one’s enemy. Trying to understand and in so far as psychologically possible empathize with their perspective and point of view. Can you explain what that means in the context of this kind of barbarism?”

French police near a poster of Charlie Hebdo magazine on January 15, 2015, in Paris, about a week after the deadly Muslim terrorist attack. (Photo: Serge Attal/Flash90)

Augusta Chronicle editorial cartoonist Rick McKee should receive the Pulitzer for his January, 2015 “Obama’s ‘Wheel of Fortune’” cartoon, describing the president being utterly baffled by the puzzle on the big screen the spells “_SLAM_C TERROR_M.” He asks to buy a vowel.

Hillary is asking for a new puzzle, one without the word Islam in it altogether. She told Dickerson: “I think with this kind of barbarism and nihilism— it’s very hard to understand other than the lust for power, the rejection of modernity, the total disregard for human life— freedom or any other value that we know and— respect.”

In Hillary’s universe, the religious upbringing of these people couldn’t possibly have anything to do with why they’re lusting for power, rejecting modernity and have no regard for human life. She lectures: “Historically it is important to try to understand your adversary in order to figure out how they are thinking, what they will be doing, how they will react. I— I plead— that it’s very difficult when you deal with— ISIS and organizations like that whose— whose behavior is so barbaric and so vicious— that it doesn’t seem to have any purpose other than lust for killing and power. And that’s very difficult to put ourselves in other shoes.”

Incidentally, even though Hillary attempted to make a meaningful statement about world wide terrorism without mentioning the Mohammedan faith even once, she did name them ISIS, which is short for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But the Clintons have been immune to irony since the early 1970s.

As the presidential campaign wears on, and as the ISIS war with civilized humanity continues, undoubtedly, and becomes even more unimaginably vicious, Hillary Clinton will have to come to terms with the fact that all these atrocities are being committed by Muslims. The presidential campaign in France will be heating up as well by next summer, leading up to the 2017 vote, and right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen might be leading a continent-wide crusade against the critical European problem with Muslims within and without. Germany will also have its general election some time in 2017, with essentially the same issues and similar solutions. Hillary’s attempts Saturday night to avoid saying the M word would probably seem feeble and hopeless in retrospect, because Islam-the-problem is not likely to get better by our use of better euphemisms.

In the end, American voters, much like European voters, today are looking for tough leaders who would rid them of this relentless, indefatigable pest of an enemy, and Hillary will have to embrace this reality or lose.